Before trying XAMPP, the only AMP stack packages for Windows I had used were EasyPHP and WampServer. I hadn't tried XAMPP before because I hadn't realized it included Xdebug, but since WampServer is so ugly and I had heard a lot about XAMPP, I gave XAMPP a try. It didn't cross my mind to verify that a well-known piece of free software marketing itself as stable had an issue tracking system.
Yet, after hitting a few bugs, I realized that XAMPP has been without an issue tracker for years! No wonder why creating a MySQL identity fails with XAMPP…
No need to specify I won't be contributing to XAMPP before that's solved.
2018-10-10 update: Unfortunately, after trying a modern EasyPHP (Devserver 17), I cannot say which is better between XAMPP and EasyPHP. I recommend to choose according to your needs and the precise packages and versions offered by each option at the time you choose.